landscaping etc

First of all, I wanted to post a picture of our amazing new butcher block that Christen and Troy Bouffard gave us as a housewarming gift. Thanks guys! Troy does oustanding work. This is Purple heart and Maple.



Very nicely joined

As promised, here are some photos of our yard and landscaping work. I never thought we'd even really do a yard but here it is, mowed grass and all!


the yard from below, near the edge of the maintained part. There is 1/2 acre fenced in, the part behind me is natural treed but not very dense and has pathways. There are lots of low bush cranberries around, and the little treed area towards the left of the photo has some nice raspberries that should really take off with more sun now.


here's the view into the yard from our deck.


Marcy's garden is starting to take off, but we could use some rain!



Our boardwalk to the front door is basically done, with gravel I sorted from the driveway, the garden, a green strip, and a little retaining wall. I still need to cut those posts flush!


I finished the final part of the deck over the weekend, consisting of a small landing for another flight of stairs near the garage. This will be nice for bringing in firewood. Here also is one of the four gates into the yard (one on each side of the house, one by the driveway and one by the power line)


I also completely redid the top of the rail because I didn't like how it turned out the first time. The corners didn't touch. The I was a little short on wood due to my error (a 16' wide section of deck needs LONGER than 16' of rail because of the corners and overhang). I used all the wood for the landing, so nothing was wasted. Also, now the right side is up. Decking should have the end grain look like a smiley face, not a frowney face, so as it ages it cups in a way that it will shed water. It may be counter-intuitive, but this is how it works. Luckily I did the deck the right way.


Next step: Restain the decking, but other than that we can just enjoy our house!

This blog needs an update!

We never really seem to stop working on the house, but I've been lazy about updating the blog. Tonight I will try to take some pictures of the new fenced in yard, the new stairs and landing on the deck, and Marcy's nicely growing garden.

Grass seed planted

After a lot of hard work, the grass seed is finally planted! Now we just hope for some rain. We cleared a large area below our house but kept plenty of trees for privacy and shade. I used heavy equipment to pull stumps and haul trees up our steep lot, and then churn up the topsoil so we didn't have to bring in 50-100 yards of topsoil which would have cost a couple thousand dollars. After that it was a lot of hand shoveling and raking and clearing additional debris to smooth everything out. I'm getting in good shape doing this! I finally got so worn out I posted a craigslist ad for some help and had two guys shoveling and raking within an hour!


Here's the view from the deck


Here's a new footpath I bulldozed, the slope straight down is too hard to walk down. The guys I hired did a good job smoothing this out, it was pretty rough form the dozer.

Including what we had leftover from before, we now have about 5 cords of wood stacked. There's still an additional cord or two in smaller stacks elsewhere. About enough for 3 winters.

A change of pace, sorta

So, since our house is basically done, we had a change of pace... and worked on friends Cameron and Millie's house instead!

We had 8 days in Portland to hand out and work on the project. The time estimate was 5 days, and three of those were supposed to be partial while waiting for drywall mud to dry. Well it turned in to a little more, like 7 long, full days and one partial (like 7am to 11pm a few days). This was mostly because I'm not good at estimating these things (I'm known for saying every little task till take 15 minutes when it actually takes hours). There was some little slowdown at almost every stage, like drywall screws not setting properly, batteries running out, etc.

In the end though, I enjoyed myself, and we did a great job turning two small rooms with small closets into a large master suite a huge window into the back yard and a huge walk in closet.

Demolition was a little slower than expected. The walls had a combination of drywall, soundboard, and the most difficult to remove: plain ol' plywood. However, this stage revealed a pleasant surprise: Beautiful clear fir wood floors under the carpet! At least it will be beautiful after it's refinished. It's all covered in paint and drywall texture.

We also made a slight plan change, which required a trip to the permit office, and added a little time and complexity with the post and beam, but ultimately made a much better layout in my opinion.

Then there was the first inspection, which covered the framing and was supposed to cover electrical as far as we thought, but apparently there was one simple form that needed to be filled out. Really, the inspector could have had this with him. Another trip to the permit office while we added hard wired interconnected smoke detectors, which the first inspector told us we needed since we exposed the ceiling and made it doable...

Also, I was slowed down by being unfamiliar with some of the 1940s construction methods. Most noticably the electric. Durring demo I labeled a wire "power" but later discovered it came directly from the light fixture, so I assumed I mislabeled it. I thought we had pushed the power through the floor, but there was only a 240 volt line for the heater down there. I did some load calculations and saw it was possible to power the room off that circuit, and assumed they must have wired it that way, off one 120v leg of the 240v circuit. This made wiring a bit complicated, but I finished it this way.

THEN, when cutting the previously labeled POWER line which only went to the light fixture, we were all shocked (pun intented) by a huge spark when we thought all power to the room was off! It turns out this part of the room was a continuation of the living room circuit, and the hot power went through the light fixture (most commonly there is only power to a light when the switch is on!) So I had to rewire, which actually simplified it and let us properly dedicate the 240 volt circuit to the heating, like it's supposed to be. Luckily, the spark didn't hurt anyone or anything, I just shorted the lines with the cutters. We probably burned an extra day in all with the electric.


Yay, real wood under the carpet! See that wire there, touching me? Later we found out it was hot.


after tearing everything out, we first put in the new closet wall (this is later, after wiring and some drywall



Attic access. I spent far too much time up there. Very hot.


the post goes through the floor to a foundation footer. I got to crawl around down there a few times


applying rounded corners to the beam

it was usually like this, with several people working hard together


drywall taped, drying for first top coat of mud. The door on the right is the closet entrance


mudder fudders


John sanding away. Messy, dusty work

Texturing. This is about 3 hours before we thought we had to leave for our plane (turned out to be 5 hours). And I still had to connect outlets, smoke detectors, thermostat, and a light switch!

new post and beam in the forground where old closet and wall used to be, new closet wall and doorway in the background. This is pretty much what we got done. Framed, wired, rocked, textured. Cam and Millie still need to prime, paint, hang doors, patch floor, refinish floor, trim. Lot sof work, but I know they can do it and it will make a really nice room!

Yard

First I cut down about 20 big trees and a lot more small ones to extend a natural clearing. After cutting them down we realized it looked really nice without flattening, so we decided to keep it naturally sloped, which makes the yard much bigger, less erosion prone, and faster to make.

Last weekend I rented a Cat 277C multi-terrain loader:

This is about a 10,000 pound machine with a rubber track

The first attachment I used was an industrial grapple fork. I used it to haul tons of trees, about 3 cords, up the very steep slope. It also was sturdy enough to push over stumps and grab a few at a time, along with other brush, and pile it out of the way. All in all about a summers worth of hand work in 5 hours.

Not my picture, I didn't get any pictures during the process

Then I used a Harley Box rake, which is a high powered attachment. Think fast spinning 500 pound steel rolling pin with carbide spikes. This churns the soil, mixes in debris and rotten wood, and leaves behind a flattened mulch.

Again not my picture, but this is the tool I had

After 10 hours in the machine over the weekend, we ended up with this. It's at least half an acre (22,000 square feet), we haven't measured it yet:

Looking East, 7am

Next steps are doing some final cleaning and raking by hand, then planting fieldgrass. Finally we'll fence it in and have a large dog park for Roland!

new stuff

We've been looking for a nice table for a long time, with no luck. I considered building one, but we finally found this on craigslist. It's all real cherry, and not stained so it will darken with age and any scratches won't show a different bright wood underneath.


I'm also working on a boardwalk from our parking area to the house to make a more welcoming entry along our raised garden, and cut down on dirt and mud getting into the house. I still need to flush the boards on the right side, and then we'll plant grass along that side between the boardwalk and the garden. I screened all the gravel I dug during the process through a metal shelf to get 1" and bigger rocks, to make a nice approach and fill the spot between the boardwalk and the garage to the left. Still a little more to do.

Changy mcChange

Have you lost all hope? Do we keep changing too much? Does it seem like we don't listen? We do, there are just too many choices!

The below is rising in the ranks for several reasons. It's not too much for most people, like the red was. The green was a nice color but could have clashed with all the different types of wood we have. An accent wall may have been too much. A solid color seemed overwhelming. In this one, the color pallet goes with the floor, wood, and furnishings. It's kind of a masculine and conservative color - funny, I'm neither. The split tone serves to section off the lower floor from the cavernous vaulted ceiling. It makes the living area a little more cozy and contained.

red might be out

Decision...making...hard...

It is fun hearing people weigh in though. For every yes there is a no, for every no a yes. Other than the crazy stripe color, now that my dad has voted white we have every color voted for!

A choice may be emerging

Marcy and I are both starting to like this one. A safe, neutral, but rich color for the main walls with no two-tone, and a stronger bold accent wall color. Looks like green might be out, despite everyone, including Marcy and I, liking it. I cleaned up the Photoshop work a bit, and added dynamic lighting for a slightly more realistic preview

Little consensus

Thanks so much to all for the comments on colors, and please keep them coming!

There has been very little consensus, and we got several back-to-back comments or emails with opposite opinions!

red bad! - John
RED GOOD! - Cam

split color good- Stephanie
yes, split color good - Carol
split color bad!- Jess
yes, split color BAD- Kara

Gray looks like a battle ship - John
Gray is gloomy - Kara
Gray looks nice! - Carol

Then there are votes for most colors - red, burgandy, blue, green, sage, cream, chocolate, gray, black

So far the only color to stand out with any consensus at all it sage. And no votes for keeping it white

Personally, I think any color darker than white helps draw the attention to the floor, ceiling, furniture, windows, etc, and takes advantage of our excessive accent lighting. Now the good things provide the light and aren't drowned our by the big white walls.

I definitely like the chocolate color in the kitchen. There are highlights of that color in the counter Green matched the counter too strongly and looked bad.

I think the 2tone looks OK, but not up the stairs like the one photo.

I'm leaning towards more of a neutral color to go with the tile and ceiling, a warm gray or more chocolate perhaps, with a contrasting accent wall, maybe of that nice sage. The brown could continue into the kitchen. The sage wall is opposite the kitchen, which has a similarly colored counter top.


However, I know Marcy thinks one color on the big wall is too dominating. Any thoughts?

Update:
Below: The above photo changed with Marcy's input (and color corrected on the blinds):


Hmm, and another open, more bold, but doesn't overwhelm the room like doing the whole thing in burgundy